Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica eBook

ENDNOTES:

(1) Lines 42-52 are intrusive; the list of vegetables
which the
Mouse cannot eat must
follow immediately after the various
dishes of which he does
eat.
(2) lit. `those unable to swim’.
(3) This may be a parody of Orion’s threat
in Hesiod,
“Astronomy”,
frag. 4.

OF THE ORIGIN OF HOMER AND HESIOD, AND OF THEIR CONTEST
(aka “The Contest of Homer and Hesiod”)

Everyone boasts that the most divine of poets, Homer
and Hesiod, are said to be his particular countrymen.
Hesiod, indeed, has put a name to his native place
and so prevented any rivalry, for he said that his
father `settled near Helicon in a wretched hamlet,
Ascra, which is miserable in winter, sultry in summer,
and good at no season.’ But, as for Homer,
you might almost say that every city with its inhabitants
claims him as her son. Foremost are the men
of Smyrna who say that he was the Son of Meles, the
river of their town, by a nymph Cretheis, and that
he was at first called Melesigenes. He was named
Homer later, when he became blind, this being their
usual epithet for such people. The Chians, on
the other hand, bring forward evidence to show that
he was their countryman, saying that there actually
remain some of his descendants among them who are
called Homeridae. The Colophonians even show
the place where they declare that he began to compose
when a schoolmaster, and say that his first work was
the “Margites”.

As to his parents also, there is on all hands great
disagreement.

Hellanicus and Cleanthes say his father was Maeon,
but Eugaeon says Meles; Callicles is for Mnesagoras,
Democritus of Troezen for Daemon, a merchant-trader.
Some, again, say he was the son of Thamyras, but
the Egyptians say of Menemachus, a priest-scribe,
and there are even those who father him on Telemachus,
the son of Odysseus. As for his mother, she is
variously called Metis, Cretheis, Themista, and Eugnetho.
Others say she was an Ithacan woman sold as a slave
by the Phoenicians; other, Calliope the Muse; others
again Polycasta, the daughter of Nestor.

Homer himself was called Meles or, according to different
accounts, Melesigenes or Altes. Some authorities
say he was called Homer, because his father was given
as a hostage to the Persians by the men of Cyprus;
others, because of his blindness; for amongst the
Aeolians the blind are so called. We will set
down, however, what we have heard to have been said
by the Pythia concerning Homer in the time of the
most sacred Emperor Hadrian. When the monarch
inquired from what city Homer came, and whose son
he was, the priestess delivered a response in hexameters
after this fashion:

`Do you ask me of the obscure race and country of
the heavenly siren? Ithaca is his country, Telemachus
his father, and Epicasta, Nestor’s daughter,
the mother that bare him, a man by far the wisest
of mortal kind.’ This we must most implicitly
believe, the inquirer and the answerer being who they
are —­ especially since the poet has so
greatly glorified his grandfather in his works.